EDC2010

See the workshop plan

Metaphors of Nation in the Construction of Canadian Developer Identities Trevor Holmes, Beverley Hamilton, Brad Wuetherick, Tereigh Ewert-Bauer and Michael Potter

Trevor Holmes
 * Introduction: The EDC proposal and our big questions**

Our Abstract: Are EDC participants immune from that elusive search for a Canadian identity? Often, we construct teaching centre “selves” by naming “others.” For example, many of us have heard that we should be the “Switzerland” of our institutional territories. That is to say, in spite of any personal biases, we need to affect a kind of neutrality, a neutrality (falsely) named “Switzerland.” Conversely, it has become common in discussions about quality assurance and curriculum assessment that we NOT “become” certain countries (namely, Great Britain and Australia). In this way, other cultures and nations become shorthand for attributes that we either emulate or disavow. After hearing a brief (10-minute) position paper, we will use a map of the world to explore metaphors of national identity, what these open up and close down, and how Canadian educational developers might define or redefine ourselves in a global – or local, institutional – economy of teaching development meanings.

Our questions: So, what is gained and what is closed off by invoking geopolitical metaphors for educational development work? Are the identities constructed by this move useful at all for understanding where Canadian centres (and the developers in them) stand? That’s one question. The related question is whether we actually **are** constructing certain kinds of identities in our work – when we describe ourselves in geopolitical terms (“neutral” like Switzerland) or describe whole nations as having a monodiscourse on higher ed assessment, for example?

A second big question involves the very possibility of “neutrality” in the work of educational development. Is this a worthy goal or a (trans)disciplinary fiction, or both? Surely if the social sciences have understood the lack of a presuppositionless position since the 1980s at least, higher education development should also be aware of its own investments and non-neutralities. That’s the subject of the second half of the paper, and it suits very well the critique of the “Switzerland” metaphor. In the end, some of us argue for a "positional educational development" in which we are transparent about our biases, examined assumptions, and goals.

Trevor Holmes
 * Drawing the boundaries: Switzerland as a metaphor for neutrality**

Quite often in my work I’ve had occasion to speak with others in my field about how their teaching centres are positioned on campus (in relation to administration, in relation to academic departments or faculties, in relation to other support units, in relation to individual faculty, staff, students). Frequently, and in different professional settings, colleagues have stated that “we have to be Switzerland.” So what does this mean? To be “the Switzerland” of one’s campus suggests that a campus is the world, and our Centres must be the iconic neutral country. On the face of things, I think most people understand how this metaphor works and understand the value of facilitative neutrality (as opposed to judgmental colonization?), but one need not scratch very deep to see how it also has a problematic side.

University/College: A world… …with wars and conflicts… …with an economic trade system… …with winners and losers… …with colonizers and colonized… …with alliances and passages for some but not others… …made up of nations and borders, cultures and languages in diaspora, etc….

Switzerland is… …a place known for neutrality in all these conflicts… …a place not to attack… …a place to negotiate peace, to study science, to speak several languages… …a place to invest resources without full scrutiny…

And yet when we think of Switzerland we also find that it is… …very strict about who can vote… …a place to hide money if you’re a criminal… …a place that isn’t attacked because of all the multinational investments in it… …the supplier of Vatican guards… ...a place with historical and current dark sides (involvement with Nazis, anti-Muslim sentiment, holding Jewish treasures), just as Canada has, in regard to others. This side can be far more "sneaky" than other countries where prejudices are out in the open... …etc…

In fact, Beverley Hamilton deepens our understanding of the Swiss metaphor as someone who has spent several years there and now works in educational development in Windsor, Ontario.

Complicating Swiss Neutrality
Beverley Hamilton

For a number of years, I taught European history at the secondary level. Maps were a big part of this work – territorial expansion and shrinkage, the massed and jarring colours of tensely opposed political alliances, the gradual growth of economic trading zones, of international diplomatic coalitions, and so on. In all of these maps, Switzerland, which was my home for many years, stood out by omission. Like the last, missing piece of a jigsaw, this white cipher in the midst of the dramatic sweep of European history draws the eye, creates a kind of opaque alterneity at the heart of these maps. In this regard, the history of Swiss neutrality could be articulated as a history of “nots”: not allied in World Wars, not a member of the UN (until 2002), not a member of the EU, not formally allied with Cold War politics. Is “not”, then, the ultimate meaning of neutrality? The Swiss would argue with some justification that “not” enables them to function as emissaries and deal brokers, as they have between Iran and the United States since the 80s, for example, or as neutral meeting ground for organizations like the UN and the Red Cross. Others would argue, of course, that this “neutrality” allows them to profit from the actions of tyrants, of genocide, and or oppression. A cipher indeed. Neutrality was one of the founding principles of Swiss confederation, and independence and self-preservation have been at the root of this policy. They "father" of this neutrality, Bruder Klaus, was a former political leader and landowner who became a hermit after a visionary dream of a plough horse (worldly concerns) eating a lily (his spiritual life). Alerted to the factional conflict brewing at the Convention of Stans in 1481, in which regional politics were beginning to reflect the concerns of external alliances, Bruder Klaus sent the delegates a message, one which, according to legend, set the stage for what is now 600 years and counting of foreign policy: “Stecken den Zin nid zu wit!” Do not set the fence too far: recognize your limits and avoid power politics and conflicts with neighbors, concentrate on development within your own borders. Swiss neutrality at its roots is intended as a form of self-protection. The practical implications emerged over another century of periodic internal strife and involvement in foreign wars, with formal espousal and external recognition of this policy finally solidifying in the eighteenth century.

The Swiss constitution declares the preservation of Switzerland’s independence and welfare as the supreme objective of its foreign policy, with subcategories including the peaceful coexistence of nations, promotion of respect for human rights, democracy and the rule of law, promotion of Swiss economic interests abroad, the alleviation of need and poverty in the world, and the preservation of natural resources. This explains the shapes that neutrality takes when you see the country from within, as an outsider, looking out. It explains the tank traps built into every highway, the conscription and yearly training of every Swiss male adult into the Swiss military, the mandated weekly rifle training, and the rifle in every soldier's closet. Not for aggression. For defense. For the peaceful coexistence of nations, yes. But not at the cost of independence. From the Swiss perspective, independence is paramount: neutrality is one tool through which independence can be maintained.

Neutrality enables Switzerland to function as not only the broker, but also the banker, to all the squabbling and warring nation states of its own contintent, historically, and the world, currently. And it is this status as the neutral, poker-faced and secretive holder of everyone else’s wealth and confidence that also protects their independence. Are they everyone’s ally, or everyone’s stranger? Either way, they are not your enemy, and that is their capital. Neutrality can be seen as a virtuous unwillingness to involve oneself in territorial tension, expansion, warfare: it can also be seen as the ultimate in self-interest. As Alan Cowell pointed out in 1997, Swiss neutrality is not so much an "aloofness from events but...a calculated assessment of Swiss material interests and a readiness to bow to -- and exploit -- prevailing circumstances (p. 140)."

Beyond the ideals of fostering peace and living peaceably with one’s neighbors, and those are undeniably good things, the value of neutrality lies in its value in providing a place where capital can be stored and hidden by all parties, or where interactions that are otherwise impossible or formally disavowed of can take place. What goes on within the white cipher is invisible by mutual agreement. From these perspectives, neutrality IS a key economically-valued resource, and that makes it obviously not at all neutral for the Swiss themselves. While Switzerland is seen in common terms as a landlocked neutral space within a historically squabbling and embattled pack of nations states, the value of that neutral space derives from that squabbling. Their role as financiers, brokers, and in some eras, as a meeting ground for espionage, only exists because of the disputes within and between nations. Some would argue that neutral zones, like tax-free zones, enable and perpetuate the status quo of the haves, as well as territorialism and oppression. The Swiss would say that these foreign problems are none of their concern, which is true. The question is: should they be?

It is impossible, now, to talk about Swiss neutrality without addressing their role as repositories of wealth stolen from Jews and other persecuted groups during the Second World War, while holding fast the border against all but 30,000 Jewish refugees. Or, what is more, the ethics of delaying and denying claims to that wealth for half a century from survivors and descendants from their own families’ accounts with stone faced – neutrality. A death certificate, for example, would be required in order for a descendant to access a numbered Swiss account without knowledge fo the account number. Clearly an impediment for the families of Holocaust victims. Responding to massive international pressure and American sanctions on UBS, the Swiss government established the Bergier Commission in 1996, which produced 22 volumes of evidence, and both the bank and the government eventually established funds intended to redress these claims as well as the issue of Axis gold and treasures stolen from those they persecuted. In 1996. 50 years plus 1 from the end of the war. In recent years, there has been a discernible shift away from this absolutist approach to neutrality, a softening to the complexities of ethical imperative. And, in tandem, an increasingly vocal rise in tensions around immigration, minorities and diversity. A synagogue burned in Geneva in 2007. One of a number of such incidents noted with concern in a report by the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations, which recently voiced its concern over the "sharp rise in apparent anti-Seimitic incidents" in Switzerland. Investment in neutrality, or neutrality masking other attitudes?

Neutrality can breed insularity – or vice versa. I remember that, as a Swiss resident, things shifted radically to cool indifference once the tourists were gone for the season. Switzerland very actively employs a direct vote government system, where issues as specific as a five-rappen increase in the price of bread can be put to referendum (when we lived there, they voted yes). Admirably democratic, to a point: it also acts as a technique of social conformity, at times with potentially unsettling implications. A successful referendum vote in 2009 banned the building of any more minarets, associated with Muslim mosques, in the country: proponents of the ban indicated that the sound of prayers being sung from the minarets is simply too intrusive and disruptive. Given that this is a country where church bells still ring in many places at full force between 6 and 7 every Saturday night, and again from 9 to10 on Sunday, this is a bit of a facer. Currently, there are 5 mosques with minarets in Switzerland. Direct-voting works both way, though: although a national referendum rejected this practice in 2008, traditional practice allowed a town’s citizens to vote on whether non-Swiss individuals in that town can become Swiss citizens, individual by individual, based on personal information and a photograph. the practice was deemed unconstitutional in 2003, but continued regionally nonetheless until a referendum, supported and instigated by the majority government Swiss People's Party, sought unsuccessfully to reinstate this regulation in 2008. Is neutrality inevitably isolationist? If the individuals of a culture rub shoulders with others on a strictly limited basis, what impact does that have on their capacity for growth, flexibility, and reflection?

Neutrality is not the same thing as unanimity. Internally, the Swiss experience the same regional tensions and cultural differences as anywhere. As residents there, we were struck for example by the way in which people from one Swiss city might affect not to understand the Schwytzerdeutsch dialect of another Swiss city, though, admittedly, there is something to be said for the challenge of understanding in a country where the word “two” may be pronounced “zvo”, “zvay”, “zvee”, or “zvie” depending on region and context. Further there are four language regions. Voting often divides across what is sometimes called the “roeschti trench”, meaning essentially the divide between the German Swiss, who, though increasingly predominately in rural areas, tend to vote conservatively and with extreme caution towards foreign interaction, and other areas. Roeschti, for those not familiar with the dish, is the best fried potato pancake item in the western hemisphere. German Swiss tend to like it, other areas of Switzerland, less so In fact, on a number of occasions, referendums about whether to join international coalitions have divided predominately by language region. Historically, religious strife also played an element in these tensions: in addition to internal conflicts, Swiss mercenaries recruited by foreigners in Switzerland tended to be religiously affiliated, Catholic Swiss for example tending to recruitment to Catholic powers, and so on. So although neutrality may appear monolithic, its value to individuals differs regionally and by other dimensions. It is worth noting that the financial industry is concentrated in German Switzerland. Like any political position, neutrality is a contested state. A state against which individuals position themselves.

Possibly because of my experiences in seven years in a “neutral” country, neutrality is a word that has always raised the same kinds of flags as “authentic” or “natural” – words that make practices unquestionable, an opacity masquerading as a transparency. If we adopt neutrality as educational developers, as a stance, we should know what it brings us: what we protect when we establish our neutrality. If neutrality protects our independence from others – as with Switzerland -- what is the quid pro quo? What makes it too expensive for another unit to absorb us? Or, what kinds of capital do we have to harbor for others, in order to avoid simply being rolled over, balkanized, in the quest of campus nations – departmental silos – to protect themselves. Far from being virtuously neutral, ideally open to the service of all, what if the neutrality of Centres is a kind of way of investing the capital of the “have” departments, to enrich that existing capital? What if those with the most social and academic capital can leverage those funds, through their “secret” accounts in the neutral country, for research, for project development, for opportunities for students, or for dissemination? By capital, I am not necessarily talking about money – I am talking about the intellectual, social, and cultural capital that are produced and circulated in knowledge economies, and the kinds of “exchange rates” that operate within the academic community and beyond it. Even though neutrality suggests openness to all, history on the larger scale suggests that neutrality often enables the status quo. So – what are the implications of neutrality for those inside the neutral territory? Given the diversity of views inside centres, whose ends does neutrality serve?

A central question Centres need to consider is what their goals are, and what stance best serves those goals. It is certainly true, for example, that allying oneself wholly with something like quality assurance or evaluation of teaching has profound implications for what one can accomplish or not accomplish in an institution, for the kinds of relations one can have, for the way the Centre will be perceived by other membes of the university community. Or that profound engagement with the values and practices of some departments while more or less denying neglecting others will impact perceptions of accessibility and equity. But neutrality has many faces and I suppose a key question is how do we want to belong, where do we want to belong, and to whom and how do we want to extend a sense of belonging? What kinds of systems and networks are we part of, and why?

Switzerland’s neutrality emerged and was maintained very much in relation to its geographical reality. Better to be Switzerland, for example, than the Alsace, constantly tossed back and forth between countries depending which direction the armies were marching in any given decade. If you are surrounded by a sea of embattled places all struggling for limited "territory" -- and let's for the sake of argument imagine funding and recognition as the academic equivalent – perhaps the Swiss version of neutrality might be seen as a legitimate retreat from annexation. Whatever it takes that makes one too valuable to be subsumed or balkanized, some might argue. After all, not all neutralities are shaped by this same set of historical circumstances. Ireland’s World War II neutrality, for example, was more an expression of its marginality than its centrality, more of resistance to the status quo (as they perceived British imperialism) than its perpetuation.

A longstanding alternative neutrality involves organizations like the Swiss Cross, Medecins Sans Frontieres, Engineers without Borders, microbanking cooperatives. Surely all of these organizations have their failings, but this paper is perhaps not the place to explore them. Only – the individuals who act and work through these organizations, for good or ill, act, across borders, across tribes, across ideologies. Each organization adheres to its own code of ethics, within contextual and professional limits. These make the situation no easier. And yet, the goal of this neutrality is service, access to individuals, permeability of borders. This model of neutrality would not see centres protecting their borders against the depredations of the ongoing battle for territory, but constantly working to move beyond their borders, into the arenas where citizens of the knowledge community live and work, require support and expertise, but still with the infrastructure, broad perspective and accreditation necessary to maneuver and to share what has been learned in other countries, other times and places. Riskier? For sure. Messier? Definitely. That plough horse is definitely going to eat your lily. Worth it? A good question to discuss.

Reference: Cowell, A. (1997). Dispatch: Switzerland's Wartime Blood Money. //Foreign Policy, 107//, 132-144.

Metaphors Reflecting Historical Reality
Brad Wuetherick

Using ‘nations’ as a metaphor for identity can be both easy and powerful, but it is important to realize the history of that nation as it relates specifically for that metaphor (and acknowledging that national histories are contentious in and of themselves). The metaphor, for example, of Switzerland for neutrality is one that is easy to understand. Switzerland has been a internationally recognized neutral nation for close to two hundred years (1815 – Congress of Vienna), is known for not joining either side during both the first and second world war, has been home to numerous international meetings related to controlling warfare/militarization (including those resulting in the Geneva Convention), and is now home to numerous ‘neutral’ international organizations including the WTO, IOC, FIFA, Red Cross, World Economic Forum, and (after New York) the largest offices of the UN.

As Beverley details above, the reality of Swiss neutrality is something quite different. Switzerland has, throughout the past two centuries, maintained its neutrality through military deterrence, achieved through continued mandatory military service for all men (optional for women) resulting in an active military of over 200,000 service personnel at any given time (which when measured as a proportion of the overall population is one of the largest militaries in the world - roughly 20,000 new men trained every year as part of the mandatory service). If you dig deeper into its neutrality, however, you will find that Swiss troops (or at the very least, soldiers identified as Swiss troops by those employing them) continued to serve foreign powers until 1860, and continue even today to provide the papal guard at the Vatican. During World War I, Switzerland housed Lenin until he was able to return to Russia to lead the Russian Revolution. And during World War II Switzerland was complicit in a number of different activities, albeit made as concessions against invasion by Germany, including the extension of credit, economic cooperation, and the involvement of Swiss banks in the Holocaust by accepting and (until recently) secretly holding valuables confiscated from Jews through German held territories, while continuing to play all sides by dealing with the Allies both financially and as a starting point for espionage. Too, Switzerland was one of the last nations in the Western world to allow women to vote (federally in 1971 and in some cantons (or provinces) not until 1990). Switzerland is one of the hardest nations for foreign nationals to secure both employment and citizenship. And Swiss banks continue to be known for their secrecy and involvement in providing banking services for what would otherwise be illegal transactions in other national contexts.

There are, of course, other national metaphors that could be used in referring to neutrality – including nations that both claim to be neutral, like Mexico, Cambodia, etc., and those recognized internationally as neutral, like Sweden, Ireland, Austria, Costa Rica, etc. For our purposes, Irish neutrality may be a more interesting metaphor to use. Ireland has a relatively small defense force, one that can only be involved in a conflict if it meets the ‘triple lock’ test of approval by the Irish Government (President), Irish Parliament, and the UN Security Council. Irish neutrality, however, also has its own underside in terms of allowing Irish citizens to actively participate in the British or American militaries during the second world war, Irish government’s involvement in UN-sanctioned peace keeping and peace making endeavors (in Liberia for example), as well certain citizens' involvement in the continued violence in Northern Ireland. Irish neutrality continues to have its own detractors, including former cabinet minister and Progressive Democrat party leader, Mary Harney, who stated "you cannot be neutral between democrat and dictator, you can't be neutral between right and wrong." Regardless of the metaphor being used, it is important to understand and consider the possible underside and implications of that metaphor.

=Neutrality as impossible= Michael Potter

As educational developers, it is impossible to take a neutral stance regarding teaching and learning. We function as advocates, propagandists, activists, and champions for teaching and learning at our institutions -- and, for some of us, provincially and nationally as well. This doesn't mean it's impossible for us to adopt a neutral stance in particular situations (say, regarding candidates for a teaching award), but those cases represent exceptions to our norm.

Much of the time, we must admit, we also have no interest in even pretending to be neutral. Those of us who work at campuses that are still, by and large, hostile to the notion that teaching could be taken as seriously as the feeding behaviour of Asian carp, or the representation of differently-abled bisexual women of colour in Harper's magazine, understand that we must advocate ceaselessly, to the point of exhaustion. Neutrality as a general stance would be like Sisyphus stepping aside for a smoke break; the rock would roll all the way down to the bottom, and whatever progress had been made to that point would be lost.

We proceed anyway, Sisyphean as our tasks may be, because, as it turns out, a neutral stance isn't necessary as long as we can persuade our faculty colleagues that we are not playing a zero sum game; that is, the mere fact that teaching is being taken more seriously will not endanger the status of their research. The one needn't gain at the expense of the other.

Should we even strive for neutrality? Is that an ideal to which educational developers should aspire? No. Neutrality is stasis. The moment one leans in any direction, the moment one makes a decision to work towards something, neutrality is lost. As an ideal, then, neutrality is like Nirvana, a blissful state of changelessness that can obtain only when this world has been left behind. Even in those situations in which we can adopt a neutral stance, the stance can persist only as long as we do nothing. Neutrality, then, implies indifference or apathy. How many educational developers can honestly claim indifference to what happens at their institutions?

Trevor Holmes and Tereigh Ewert-Bauer

Maybe there is not neutral position from which to do our work. In which case, how to proceed? Foreground our positions when we invite people in or get invited out?

There is not a neutral position--this is impossible. The only solution is to strive for neutrality, and to be self-aware enough to admit to and be transparent about our own biases and agendas.

(tmh asks: why strive for neutrality at all if it is a false thing? why not just be up front about our biases?) (teb replies: I did say that striving for neutrality requires self awareness and transparency.. it is not unlike striving for teaching excellence--we never stop developing in this regard. And striving to be neutral does not muzzle us regarding being transparent about our biases. As a matter of fact, I betcha that we move closer to neutrality through openness and discussion with others. For example, when teaching my grad students one year, they gave feedback that indicated that many of the readings focused on the humanities. This allowed me to search for other readings that would then balance the perspective. Of course, the process of collecting formative feedback and making adjustments accordingly betrayed my subjective belief in being student-centred, democratic, etc. (tmh replies -- so is this not striving for some kind of fairness, rather than neutrality as such? I think the utopic ideal, or the teleological end place, is something other than neutrality, which to my mind excuses us too much from grappling with the tricky stuff. Maybe I'm hung up on "neutral" because I think it's always already false. I really think that we are striving for something other than neutrality when we do all these things -- including feedback and adjustment. What would I call it? Maybe social justice in a teaching/learning space -- socio-academic justice?) (and in response to the next section, Beverley Hamilton reminds us of a Peter Gzowski competition for "As Canadian as..." and the answer was "As Canadian as possible under the circumstances"? It occurs to me that this can also work -- "as neutral as possible under the circumstances" ...?) (tmh still thinks neutrality isn't the gold standard to be sought)

=What if we were Canada?= Trevor Holmes and Tereigh Ewert-Bauer

TMH: The other thinking I’ve been doing has been around our materializing of phantom others in discourse. That is to say, we speak of Australia and the United Kingdom as places that we should not “become” in quality-assurance measures (the research and teaching assessments that they do). So what would we look like if we were the Canada of our universities and colleges? If our institutions were the world, and teaching centres were the Canada of that world? Tereigh Ewert-Bauer interrogates any singular identity for Canada:

Tereigh Ewert-Bauer Describing “the Canadian identity” is challenging, because there are two very general ways to do so. First, the notion of identity may be defined as the qualities / characteristics of a person or place by which //others perceive or understand// that person or place to be. In this regard, Canada is often perceived by non-Canadians as being a peace-keeping nation, consisting of beavers, RCMP, abundant natural resources, and the frequent and cute use of the word “eh” in every conversation. “The” Canadian identity also projects itself and is perceived as inclusive and multicultural. How our multiculturalism is perceived, though, is as one that “celebrates differences,” rather than one that interrogates power inequalities and oppression. However well-intentioned, “celebrating differences” only draws attention to and divides //us// and //them.// The //us//, frequently and sneakily, actually refers to white, middle-class, able-bodied, heterosexual, men and women. Thus, “the Canadian identity” even in the most general terms, is conflicted regarding who is and is not Canadian.

The second general description of “the Canadian identity” actually rejects “the” and pluralizes “identities,” for the identities assumed by individuals, families, and communities, are most often //not// consistent with the identity by which we are recognized globally. These manifestations of identity can often resist or subvert our global identity and its projection of itself as a benevolent and tolerant nation, and draws attention to the complex stratification that actually //does// represent Canada.

So, for our teaching and learning centres, would we rather identify with Switzerland or with Canada?

Trevor Holmes Clearly being Canadian or being Canada is not a monocultural thing. To the extent that there is something to be said about Canadian plural identities, a variety of questions arise for me: (TEB) I love these questions, and am going to write a few thoughts to be used (or not) as you like.
 * Where on campus is our American neighbour, the neighbour whose culture threatens to override us (to the extent there's an "us"? (TEB) I don't think I'd feel comfortable trying to identify who is our American neighbour, because to do so, I would have to fall back on negative stereotypes of America AND I'd have to reinforce a false dichotomy of teaching vs research (for in identifying who is American on our campus, most certainly the response would be that America is the bad guy--the guy who is all about research grant money and every-researcher-for- him/her self).
 * Who is our former colonizer (our England)?
 * What are our “natural” affinities with other former colonies (where is Australia, India, etc. on our campuses)?
 * What would it mean to be "bilingual" in teaching and learning? Are we bilingual in practice and in policy?
 * Who are our indigenous peoples and how are indigenous identities constituted in teaching/learning?
 * When are we at war in the name of keeping the peace?

Alternative Metaphor for Identity: Musings on AD as an academic tribe
Brad Wuetherick

Another metaphor that we could use to discuss our ‘academic developer’ identity, which also resonates with the metaphors we have been using related to nation, is academic development as an academic tribe or territory (Becher, 1989). Becher, who described two different ways of categorizing disciplines, into both soft (low consensus) and hard (high consensus) as well as pure and applied, talks about the history and culture of disciplines forming over time much in the way that we might consider how national identities form through the influence of history and culture.

Is academic development, however, a stand alone discipline in and among the other academic tribes? Do we have a territory that we have claimed? Academic development arguably has its roots as a discipline in the formations of the International Consortium of Educational Development and the founding of the International Journal for Academic Development in the early 1990s, though academic developers have been working on campuses much longer than that. David Baume, in the inaugural issue of IJAD challenged AD to think about the theory and philosophy underpinning or springing from academic development (Baume, 1995). This was followed by Andresen’s call on academic developers to engage in academic work by pursuing and advancing knowledge in our “own” field – “to participate in relevant discourses about their theory and practice” (1996, p.47). The identity of AD as a discipline (the emergence of it as a ‘field’ in Bourdieu’s sense), however, has been a site of struggle and transformation (Clegg, 2009). Rowland, for example, found that over one-third of the articles published in IJAD between 2001 and 2006 were specifically to do with role and identity. There have been a number of scholars exploring academic development as a discipline, including Eggin and Macdonald’s //The Scholarship of Academic Development// (2002), Bath and Smith’s article “Academic Development: An Academic Tribe claiming territory in higher education” (2004), and Land’s //Educational Development: Discourses, Identity and Practice// (2004), just to name three from the first half of the last decade.

The sense of identity felt in the academic development as a discipline is far from universal, in part due to the diverse disciplinary backgrounds from which educational developers are drawn. This is magnified by the disciplinary uncertainty of academic development in the university’s power structure. Borrowing from Rowland, Grant and Manathunga, they are in the ambiguous position of promoter of academic values, while at the same time serving as the foot soldiers of administration and the representative of “The University”. They are peripheral outsiders – promoting contestation and critical interdisciplinarity – while at the same time being central outsiders – identified with the management discourse of the ‘centre’ and promoting compliance. Therefore AD is often trapped in the “painful” space between managerial quality assurance agendas and critical/personal understandings of role, which is further compounded by the ambiguity in our role as both teaching and learning “expert”, as well as “therapist” for individual academics teaching across the disciplines. A core purpose is to uphold academic values at a time when neoliberal pressures place these values under threat, rather than merely enhancing the ‘processes’ of student learning – positioning AD within the context of relations of power that militate against the very educational purposes towards which we strive. (Please Note: This section is all poorly cited, but is drawn primarily from Rowland, Grant and Manathunga).

Considering the metaphors
Trevor Holmes

Further questions arising for me in considering historical reality, the impossibility of neutrality, and our attempts to proceed inclusively, democratically, collegially, postcolonially..

If the teaching centre is a territory in which other territories have made investments and may or may not overrun us, if the teaching centre has a certain amount of autonomy but is also dictated to, I wonder a few things:
 * who has a passport
 * who can vote
 * what currency do we use
 * what conflicts do we help to negotiate
 * who are our tourists
 * do we send guards out to the institution's papacy
 * whose money are we hiding
 * whose art have we stolen
 * …etc.

What does this mean for our work?
Brad Wuetherick and Trevor Holmes

So what?

How do we as ADers enfranchise the people and cultures ‘needing development’ with power and knowledge? And how do we, at the same time, form our identities that in turn reflect the complexity that is the academic developers work and role on campus?

Borrowing from Abdi (2009), it can be argued that the academic developer’s role in development, in relation to the disciplines we are working with, must be historically affirming, culturally not alienating, philosophically localized, linguistically inclusive (recognizing Green’s recent work on the language of higher education as a significant barrier for disciplinary-based academics), epistemically and epistemologically validating, and developmentally sensitive and responsive.

Possible ways forward? 1. Trading Zone/Contact Zone – Huber and Hutchings drew on the anthropological notion of the trading zone as a metaphor for the cross disciplinary sharing of ideas about teaching and learning in higher education that is academic development work. This unfortunately does not reflect the power imbalances and conflict that can exist between disciplines/tribes/nations on campuses. Catherine Manathunga uses instead the related concept of the contact zone (Pratt, 1992 via Kenway and Bullen, 2004). Contact zones are the social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of dominance and subordination (2005). According to Kenway and Bullen, the goal of teaching in the contact zone is with a focus on “how students, texts or cultures might come together in productive dialogue – without glossing over difference”. This could be done in AD – coming together for mutually productive exchanges about teaching and learning across disciplinary boundaries, while respecting the differences in identities/cultures/backgrounds we all bring to that exchange while being conscious of the issue of power related to those differences. 2. Public Sphere – Kandlbinder (2006), drawing on Habermas’ idea of the public sphere as an essential space for deliberation and participation in democratic self-governance, suggested that AD can better engage with its disciplinary-based colleagues by providing a space for them to come together in debate and discussion (deliberative democracy) with the ADer playing the critical role of ‘informed’ facilitator – drawing on an evidence-based literature, recognizing its non-neutrality, to facilitate communicative dialogue that generates political legitimacy through ensuring that the procedures of opinion formation are public, transparent, inclusive, and lead to reasonable outcomes (Bohman, 1996). 3. Minoritarian deconstruction, rhizome and deterritorialization -- Deleuze and Guattari's particular anti-depth models of the world and self offer productive, affirmative ways of conceptualizing and being in the postmodern era. Like many poststructuralists, Deleuze and Guattari are suspicious of unifying narratives in politics, art, philosophy, literature, science, psychology, and so on. Guattari's early work experimented with education before he moved to clinical anti-psychiatry. Deleuze followed a philosophical line drawn through Nietzschean affirmation and becoming, and the transvaluation of value. Together, they created systems of rethinking history, culture, politics using language as one of their tools. It's tempting to think about educational development in terms of deterritorialization and flow as a way out of the limits we face institutionally and ethically. In the interstices of the contact zone, our disciplinary creolizations are never value-free, but they can resist liberal tolerance of difference, resist possessive individualism in the arena of teaching/learning efficacy, and resituate discord as useful.

A (draft) Manifesto for Positional Educational Development
Trevor Holmes

1. We are not neutral, nor are our theories or techniques; claims to facilitative neutrality are obscurantist 2. We can be effective in our work by foregrounding our biases, backgrounds, and goals while sharing our critical sense of our assumptions 3. Any cohesive identity as a field or profession is questionable, and should be resisted to the degree that it colonizes 4. It is possible, even desirable, to proceed collegially in our interactions, rather than only interact when we are perceived to have no interest or no conflict 5. Our understandings of global and local educational systems should be accompanied by active deliberation and intervention; Academic Freedom should be extended to educational developers where it is not already guaranteed